WHISPERS THROUGH AMERICA

“Born down in a dead man’s town

And the first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much

‘Til you spend half your life just to cover up”

— Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA

The soil was red with iron before the trees and bushes gave way to the stark desert of New Mexico. The kid looked out the window at the lands of the Comanche Nation. Bruce Springsteen sang in his headphones. It all came together quite suddenly: he was not in Kansas anymore. 

Everything else was a rush of scattered memories. A midnight bus in St. Louis that he’d boarded along with a couple dozen other haggard travelers, a restless night he’d spent trying to sleep, and a red-eyed morning when he just felt glad to be alive and safe. He was half-asleep the whole time, but never quite there. The odd thing was that despite the dire situation, he felt completely in his element. He was going west, just like he was supposed to be. He was giving up control and letting himself be led along the path. He was in the right place at the right time. Everything was going to be okay.

The bus had pulled over to change drivers in a bright, early morning in Tulsa. Among the shuffling feet and piles of bags, the kid met Elijah, an old man dressed in colorful raggedy clothes that made him look like a dollar store wizard, or a hippie at a music festival. He had asked for a light or something, and the kid obliged. 

“You look like an experienced traveler.” The kid said. 

“Naw,” Eli laughed. “Not by a long shot. This is my first time.” 

So they had that in common. Eli had a similar story. He said he wasn’t feeling love from his extended family in Illinois, and needed a radical break from things. He’d hoped to find something else in life, something new and different, out west. Like the kid, he was vague about all the other details. They were friends right away. Even so, they spent the next leg of the journey in different seats again. 

The kid met an out-of-work trucker who said the industry sucked. He met a Native American man who was going home to Arizona. A man with a face tattoo struck up a conversation with him over the brand of bottled water that he’d bought from a gas station somewhere in the deserts of Nevada. The kid couldn’t even remember what the conversation had been about; just something as fantastical and insane as he’d have expected from a man whose tattoo cut across his face with a jagged bolt of red ink, and that it had included the words “everybody’s guilty of murder.” That had seemed very profound at the time. A lot of it seemed profound at the time. The kid didn’t see the drugs and the pain and the suffering at first; all he saw was the adventure and the struggle, the opportunity, the freedom, the wonder of the American west – the possibilities of a new frontier. 

The kid walked out for his fifteen minutes of freedom along with the other tramps and travelers, pulled down his paper mask and breathed in the open air. He took in whatever sights the back-alley greyhound stops could offer him, fed a stray dog, tried to calm his heart and relax in the certainty that all he had to worry about, for the moment, was staying on the journey. 

Among the other snapshots of brief moments, the kid remembered the feeling of safety that had warmed him when the bus arrived in Phoenix. He had gotten a Burger King breakfast for himself and got Eli. Eli called him a good person. The kid wrote in his diary that he was just salving a guilty conscience, and that his kindness felt like a duty, not a choice. He’d been told he couldn’t run away from himself and he knew it was true, but if he kept himself occupied then it wouldn’t matter. He could distract himself. 

At some point he and Eli decided to sit together. The guy in the seat ahead of them leaned back to talk. This was Trevor, another tramp on his way to LA.

Trevor was immediately likeable. He had big plans, and endless ones, and whatever he said had the ring of truth. Nothing could stand in his way.

In another life, he had fought in the MMA octagon. Now, he was starting again after he’d survived jumping off a bridge, which had shattered his spine and left him with a terrible limp. Now that he was back in action, he was on his way to play guitar and party in the city of angels. He carried nothing but his guitar in a case, and the clothes on his back. He said he preferred “cowboy camping,” without shelter or even a tarp. His clothes would be good enough. Although the kid thought this sounded crazy, Trevor had the raw confidence to make it sound totally okay, as if he could speak reality into being. He could use the company of fellow travelers, and with his prior experience tramping around the west coast, he could show them both around the territory, too. Within minutes, the three of them agreed to be partners.

Arrival in Los Angeles happened before the kid had time to catch his breath. He didn’t really question the amazing luck of stumbling into a couple of like-minded partners to run with in the vast urban sprawl. He was just going along for the ride.

Trevor led the way to a city bus, already in his element. Neither Eli nor the kid could figure out the bus payment app or make the right change, but the driver waved them onboard anyway. The buses had been free during COVID and only recently switched back to payment. Nobody was uptight about it. It was an unexpected perk: a path through the cracks of society where the kid had expected trouble and cost. The next few hours, days and weeks would follow in much the same way: ease where the kid had expected hardship, freedom where he had expected rules. 

Santa Monica Pier was a fitting place for the travelers to end up; at the terminus of Route 66 and feeling like the edge of the world. The kid was triumphant. The carnival lights of the ferris wheel and the roller coasters lit up the sky. Trevor told them stories about bonfires and hippie gatherings on the beach, but tonight it was cold and deserted. Was it COVID, or just the inevitable gentrification of the city that cleaned up the beaches and left them bare of all but suntanning tourists and patrol cars? At any rate, Santa Monica was not what it used to be. The three of them lingered on the walkway above the sand, cracking open beers and hanging out on the benches. 

It didn’t feel real to the kid. He couldn’t believe he was hanging out with like-minded tramps and having a casual welcoming party to the City of Angels. He had finally made it, gone west, gotten free from everything that he felt was holding him back. This was at least one thing he had done right. It was a perfect moment. Of course he got carried away with it and thought that everything would be great. Great things never last. 

Trevor said they could sell T-shirts. They could play in a band. He said he had a van that he was going to get back from his mother, who had an apartment in the city. He grilled the kid about his experience; learned of his meager piano skill, turned that into a grand fantasy of keyboard player for a fledgling operation that would tour the country and make them all rich. He quizzed the kid on everything he could find out – delving into the kid’s art experience as well. The kid showed him a few pictures of his work on his phone, and when the next stranger passed by on the sidewalk, Trevor got his attention. 

“Go on, show him. Hey sir, looking to get your opinion on my friend’s art here!” 

This man turned out to know quite a lot about digital art himself, and gave some valuable critiques.

“See?” Trev was delighted. “See? That’s all it takes! You just gotta put yourself out there and start talking to some people.” 

Suddenly under Trevor’s wing now, the kid saw Eli getting quiet and probably feeling left out. He made it clear when Trevor and the kid wanted to move on to a better spot to spend the night, trying to find a cheap hostel in the area. Eli put his foot down. They had already been walking up and down the edge of the city above the beach for most of the evening, and Eli’s luggage was four suitcases packed to the brim. He pushed back against the group’s decisions for the first time, settling on a bench and refusing to move another inch until he knew where they were going. He accused Trevor of not giving a fuck because Trev didn’t have heavy bags to drag around. Trevor called him out for being ungrateful and for being a dope smoker and a junkie, and telling him to go see Skid Row.

“You think I don’t know tweakers man? I know tweakers. Go see Skid Row, man, go see it for yourself. That’s where you’re gonna end up out here.” By the end of the rant, he was yelling as loud as he could. 

The kid was still too close to a child to know how to endure yelling. He hated it, from the center of his chest he seethed with utter hatred for lost tempers and screaming voices. He couldn’t imagine it being a positive thing. Even though he knew logically that there must be some reason for passion and even for violence, to see anything like it put into action filled him with loathing. Innately, he was biased to side with the one being yelled at.

He was suspicious of any altruistic motive that Trevor may have had for the rant, but the other side of him knew damn well there could be good reasons for what Trevor obviously saw as just tough love. And for another thing, Trevor was currently his best chance of survival in a large urban center that he’d never planned to stay in, just a few short days ago. The kid was still ludicrously underprepared. He didn’t have two shits worth of a clue where to go to sleep tonight, or where to scrounge for food, or where to go to get a charge on his phone. Without Trevor, he felt completely out at sea.  

The kid stuck around the bench while Trevor walked off to cool down. Eli cocooned himself in various blankets, laying down on the bench with his back to the world. 

“Hey, I’m gonna go find Trevor because I don’t want to sleep on a bench tonight, man.” The kid told Elijah’s silent back. “There’s no hard feelings, really – I’ll call you or something tomorrow and I hope we see each other again.” 

The kid walked off. A few dozen palm trees away, Trevor was explaining himself to a few pretty girls who had heard the commotion. He explained himself to the kid, too. He sounded pretty reasonable then. Trevor was a crazy person yelling at a bum and then talking to these strangers to defend his honor, but he was a young and good-looking crazy person and he could talk the feathers off an eagle if he wanted to. And maybe his freewheeling style didn’t impress everyone he came across, but it impressed the kid. Trevor was an archetypal tramp, wild and free. He seemed like he could wring every last drop of fun out of his life until the day he died, get away with anything, come back from death itself because he was just too alive and having too much fun to be kept down like that. He must have been feeling on top of the world that night, or at least he convinced the kid that he was.

Trevor was young and hot-blooded, hyperactive, and fast-talking, and the kid regarded him with fascination but also with distrust. Then again, he didn’t believe Trevor was truly an asshole – well, a bit of an asshole, but an asshole who was on his side and who had a heart of gold, deep down. Trevor didn’t want the kid to get caught up in LA’s culture of wanton hard drugs and the bottomless pit of life on the street there, either. So the kid helped him find a hostel. Trevor had thought it would be easy and cheap, but not in Santa Monica, not on short notice. Even the hostels there cost two hundred a night. He almost balked at that point, but the kid assured him that he could eat the cost for one night. All it took was the swipe of the kid’s bank card to get them one more night of peace and safety behind four walls and a door. 

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t sign up for this.” The kid wrote in his journal. “Experience like this, you can’t get from a book.” 

The kid slept on the floor; he was used to it now. He preferred it to the softness of a bed. It was part of his punishment, and part of his training. Besides, what did he have to whine about? Eli was probably sleeping on that bench outside. Under the circumstances, with his heart pounding in his chest, the kid was shocked that he was able to sleep at all – but three days of riding buses had taken its toll. Exhaustion overtook him.